The percentage of the world population suffering from morbid obesity is steadily increasing. Severely obese persons are susceptible to increased risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, pulmonary disease, and accidents. Because of the effect of morbid obesity on the life of the patient, methods of treating morbid obesity are being researched.
Numerous non-operative therapies for morbid obesity have been tried with virtually no permanent success. Dietary counseling, behavioral modification, wiring a patient's jaws shut, and pharmacological methods have all been tried, and though temporarily effective, have failed to correct the condition. Further, techniques such as introducing an object in the stomach to fill the stomach, such as an esophago-gastric balloon, have also been used to treat the condition. However, such approaches tend to cause irritation to the stomach and are not effective long-term.
Surgical treatments for morbid obesity have been increasingly used with greater success. These approaches may be generalized as those that reduce the effective size of the stomach, limiting the amount of food intake, and those that create malabsorption of the food that is eaten. For instance, some patients benefit from adjustable gastric bands (AGB) that are advantageously laparoscopically placed about the stomach to form a stoma of a desired size that allows food to fill an upper portion of the stomach, causing a feeling of satiety. To allow adjustment of the size of the stoma after implantation, a fluid conduit communicates between an inwardly presented fluid bladder of the AGB to a fluid injection port subcutaneously placed in front of the patient's sternum. A syringe needle may then inject or withdraw fluid as desired to adjust the AGB.
Although an effective approach to obesity for some, other patients may find the lifestyle changes undesirable, necessitated by the restricted amount of food intake. In addition, the medical condition of the patient may suggest the need for a more permanent solution. To that end, surgical approaches have been used to alter portions of the stomach and/or small intestine available for digesting food. Creating an anastomosis, or the surgical formation of a passage between two normally distinct vessels, is a critical step in many of these surgical procedures. This is particularly true of gastric bypass procedures in which two portions of the small intestine are joined together and another portion of the small intestine is joined to the stomach of the patient. This is also true of surgery to alleviate a blockage(s) in the common bile duct by draining bile from the duct to the small intestine during surgery for pancreatic cancer. With particular reference to gastric bypass procedures, current methods of performing a laparoscopic anastomosis for a gastric bypass include stapling, suturing, and using biofragmentable rings, each of which has significant challenges.
Consequently, there is a general need for an improved method for joining one piece of tissue to another piece of tissue, and in particular for forming an anastomosis between the small bowel and the stomach.